[Mplayer-advusers] trouble with the -vm option

[Magnus Pfeffer]

Hi,

this is a rather longish report, please be patient with me (:

I use MPlayer cvs version of today on an Athlon-850 box running Debian/GNU 
Linux unstable (of today). I can provide further system details if needed.

I am using MPlayer to display movies on my tv. For this, I have an additional 
pci graphics card in my box that is connected to the rgb "scart" input of 
the tv using a simple circuit. Both the pci and the main agp card are driven 
using the multi-head capabilities of XFree86 4.1.0; the screens are set up 
as :0.0 (my monitor connected to the agp card) and :0.1 (the tv). 
The tv screen offers square pixel resolutions (768x576 at 50Hz(i) and 
640x480 at 60Hz(i)) as well as dvd-resolutions (720x576 at 50Hz(i) and 
720x480 at 60Hz(i))

In the XF86Config-4 file I omitted the "Rightof" or "LeftOf" options in the 
layout section, so the mouse cannot be moved from the main (:0.0) to the 
second (:0.1) screen. It drives me crazy when the mouse cursor gets lost 
because I hit the edge of the screen.

I wanted to use the -vm option to make MPlayer use an appropriate resolution 
depending on the viewed material, and the -display option to select the 
display. As the pci card is a Matrox Mystique (no XVideo) I use the x11 
video output together with the -fs -zoom -sws 2 options to get fullscreen.

The movies are displayed correctly , but if I use the -vm option, MPlayer 
"steals" the mouse cursor and places it on the tv screen. When MPlayer stops 
playback, the mouse cursor is placed back on the main screen. So I cannot 
use the main screen while MPlayer is running. 

If I use the "RightOf" option in the XF86Config I can move the mouse back to 
the main screen, but this invariably messes with the tv display, if a 
resolution smaller than 768x576 is chosen by the -vm option. (the desktop 
has a virtual size of 768x576 and moving the mouse leads to moving the 
visible part of the desktop as soon as you hit the borders).

If I do not use the -vm option, the mouse cursor stays on the main screen, 
and I can use the main screen while MPlayer is running. So I think the 
"stolen" mouse cursor is not an intended behaviour.

I tried to read through the source to find out why there was a difference in 
behaviour, but my C and X programming skills seem to be lacking. Reading 
through x11_common.c and vo_x11.c I found the #ifdef'ed parts containing the 
mode switch logic, but no hint that the mouse cursor was touched at all ): 

My only guess would be that one of the XF86* library function calls does 
something to the mouse cursor, but the respective man pages gave me no nore 
clues ):

The question is: Can the -vm option be changed so that it does not place the 
mouse cursor on the screen where the movie is displayed? 

Thanks for a great piece of software and your support,

Magnus

BTW: If you are interested in the circuit used to connect the tv and the pci 
card, you can have a look at my home page:  
http://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~pfeffer/tvout/ 
where I documented it (sorry, its in German) or the web page that I used for 
information on the circuit: 
http://www.sput.nl/hardware/tv-x.html (English, but very terse and slighly 
wrong modelines)